(upbeat music) - This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. - So good morning, everyone. I've never given a talk like this, which is part of a series of talks on the same theme. It's slightly nerve-wracking, 'cause you're sitting there listening to the preceding speakers kind of enjoying the talk, but also at the back of your mind, slightly nervous they're gonna start talking about what you're planning on talking about. And there's been a few times where they've started kind of straying onto rather kind of nerve-making territory. And I've been thinking, no, don't talk about that. That's what I wanna talk about. Anyway, I think my talk is kind of reasonably intact. (audience laughing) I just feel sorry for my tressara, who's the last of all of that. (audience laughing) Anyway, when I first got involved in the movement, nearly 20 years ago, one of the books I read in those early days was a book by Naga Bodhi called "Jai Bin." And it's a book about the Dharma Revolution in India. That's what it's mainly about. But he also talks about his experience of being involved in the movement over here in the West in its early days, and what it was like in those early days. On one little story he tells, which has always stuck in my mind for some reason, but it's when he was around the London Buddhist Center. And he was given the job of showing the sky around the mandala, the London Buddhist Center mandala. This guy was a filmmaker. He was making a documentary about the cooperative movement, the cooperative businesses. And this guy who was making this film was a well-known communist. But he was, for the BBC or someone, was making this documentary. And he wanted to come and look at the London Buddhist Center and see how they did things. So Naga Bodhi showed him round. He showed him the Buddhist Center. He showed him the communities. He showed him the team-based right livelihoods that they were called cooperative businesses at that time. And he showed him the kind of huge energy and idealism that was going into the place. This guy saw these teams that were forming and that all made their decisions based on consensus. He saw that how it was all trying to run according to the principle of give what you can, take what you need, and so on. And apparently at the end of his visit, he said the London Buddhist Center mandala was the most ideologically pure example of a cooperative itself. So I've been wondering, what would a Marxist say if they walked around the London Buddhist Center today? Or if they walked around the Birmingham Buddhist Center or any of our Buddhist centers, what would their impression be of us today? Yeah? Or what would the impression of anybody from the general public be today? In terms of how radical we are, in terms of how explicitly we're trying to change the world, how kind of strongly that comes across. So that's the kind of thing that I'm gonna be addressing in my talk today. Do we still believe in the ability of the Dharma to transform self and society? Do we really still want to make a distinctive dharmic contribution to building a better world? Are we willing to accept that challenge? And are we willing sometimes to challenge the views and values of the society around us? So as part of my exploration of this, I did a little experiment. I, last week, I looked at 22 websites of our urban Buddhist centers in the UK. So most of the websites of our Buddhist centers in this country. And I didn't look at the whole website. I just looked at the home page, the page where it gave the introductory courses and the pages where it explained what meditation was and what Buddhism was. So probably these days, most people find out about us through a website. And I was assuming that those were probably the main pages people were going to be looking at. Do you see what I mean? So I was trying to explore, what is it people come up against? What is it they kind of see when they go to find out about us? That's what I was looking at. And so what I explored was, well, what was on offer for someone like that, a new person coming along, what were the words and the language that we used to kind of describe what we were offering and what visual images were we using to kind of communicate that, yeah? I have to say I was a bit shocked, actually, by what I discovered. So there's four things I noticed that I wanted to tell you about. So firstly, what was on offer to new people? Was it meditation or Buddhism that was offered to new people? So there is a bit of variation, but typically in our Buddhist center, what you get is that there are either a few or several meditation and Buddhism courses running through the year, yeah? So definitely, you know, the chance that various points for the year to go along and learn about meditation and Buddhism. And at the same time, there are lots of dropping meditation classes, meditation days, meditation courses, yeah? So the impression I got was that meditation was overwhelmingly to the fore, yeah? There was at least two and a half times more opportunity to go and learn to meditate than there was to go and learn about meditation and Buddhism. And there was only one place where I saw that you could walk in straight in and do a Buddhism course. Yeah? That was the order it was in, yeah? And even the meditation and Buddhism courses, a typical kind of blurb for that course would be come along and learn to meditate and in the second half, you can learn about the principles of Buddhism. So even there in a subtle way, Buddhism was kind of second. It was kind of slightly to the back, as it were, yeah? So I thought that was very, very interesting. And to be frank, I think that is completely out of date. When I was teaching at the Birmingham Buddhist Center, I had a lot of teaching over 10 years. Early on, it definitely was the case that most people came along to learn to meditate and they were even a bit cagey about Buddhism. But I noticed a point when that changed and people were just as interested in meditation or they were completely at ease about coming to a Buddhist center, yeah? So I think the days when one needed to offer meditation may be as a school for me. They're not really around anymore. I think Buddhism could be much, much to the fore than it is currently in our websites, so yeah. So I'm not saying don't just do meditation classes, there might be some people that is going to attract. Great to do that. I'm just kind of questioning the kind of proportion and the emphasis and kind of questioning, does that then affect the kind of people that we tend to attract along to our centers, yeah? And I'm sort of questioning whether we can sometimes do things in quite a different way. So for example, there's a guy called Dana Purigat in Deal, just a small town. He raised last year gave a series of talks on Buddhism and he had 60 or 70 people come and taste talks. Next thing was the words and language. So I'm going to do this a bit more scientifically in the next few weeks, but so this is just a kind of impression. I'm actually going to cut and paste all the documents and do word counts on them. But this is just a bit more of an impression. So the words and language that we use to talk about what is in the meditation, words like awareness, kindness, emotionally positive, being with yourself, those sorts of words, yeah? So again, not bad words, good words, but I kind of wondered about the kind of balance, the proportion, the emphasis as it were, yeah? I felt they were one-sidedly presenting Buddhism and meditation about being, about our inner life, about personal growth, about being gentle and peaceful and not being stressed and so on, yeah? It was very much kind of going along with, I suppose, yeah, the current kind of zeitgeist about what Buddhism is, which I'm going to say a bit about in a minute, yeah? So words like confidence, courageous, selfless, resilient, fearless, they just weren't there. The next thing I noticed was the images that were used. So I counted these, so this is a bit more scientific. I counted 31 images of Buddhas, yeah? So obviously that's quite appropriate. There were 31 images of Buddhas or other Buddhist icons, yeah? But mainly peaceful meditating Buddhas, yeah? The next biggest set of images were flowers, candles, and quite kind of soft nature images, yeah? So again, the kind of image of the Buddhist center is a kind of calm, peaceful oasis, yeah? Again, there's nothing wrong with that. It's not kind of inappropriate, but I kind of wondered about the balance. Then after that, the next biggest set of images were pictures of the building, the Buddhist center, and then pictures of people in groups or meditating in groups, yeah? So again, I'm not saying that have those images, but I wondered about the balance. I wondered about the kind of overall image or impression that's giving. Again, it was, yeah, it's all very much kind of peaceful, soft, kind of quiet kind of image. There are only two images that jump-tail at me as being more kind of dynamic images. So one was on the front page of the Manchester Buddhist center site, and it was a photo of a woman meditating. So first of all, it's, oh, it's a woman meditating, it's kind of what you expect. But then you notice she's meditating right in the middle of a town square, yeah? So I thought that was a really good image 'cause it's kind of, it's immediately recognizable to people, it's kind of talking their language, and then it's just starting to kind of stretch their assumptions and their expectations of what meditation's about. So I thought that was clever, and I thought we could be doing so much, much more of that, just kind of using images in a way which communicates, but also kind of stretches and challenges people's assumptions. The other image was on the West London Buddhist center site, and it was a photo of a kid skateboarding down a slope, and he was just coming to a drop. I thought, what's that about? And so I asked someone I live with who's younger than me, and not an old, fuddy-duddy like me, and he said, well, when skateboarders do that, they drop down and they land and they carry 'em, it's called a dropping. (audience laughs) And that's what it was. It was advertising a dropping meditation class. So little bits, not quite so sure about that, but well, you know, maybe, at least it was a dynamic image. Yeah? So that was the third thing I noticed, the kind of images we were using on our websites, I thought were, yeah, one-sided. I think there's a lot of room for experiment. The fourth thing I noticed, and this was the one that really shocked me, I looked at how many times the idea that Buddhism that is about transforming the world was mentioned on those pages of the website. Yeah, so 22 websites, it was only mentioned three times, yeah? Only mentioned three times. And even then, it was just a clause in the sentence. So it'd be like, "Buddhas and his bloody bloody blood, "and we ain't gonna make a better world," you know? So it wasn't, it just wasn't there as a message at all, strongly, yeah? It just didn't feature in the way that we talk to the public about what we're doing. So, I wanna talk about this a bit more, I just wanna talk about, yeah, what are the challenges in how we kind of individually and collectively present the Dharma and talk about the Dharma in the world today? What kind of might be holding us back from being a bit more kind of bold, a bit more kind of radical, yeah? And as I thought about this, the way the kind of ideas kind of shaped in my mind was according to the teaching of the three fetters, yeah? So that's how I'm gonna talk about it. So I'm just gonna briefly explain that, I'm sure most of you know that teaching, but I'm just gonna briefly explain it in case anyone doesn't know it, or just as a kind of reminder, and then that's the kind of shape my points we're gonna take. So this is a traditional Buddhist teaching, it's actually the ten fetters that we have to kind of break through to get to enlightenment with ten things that kind of bind us down and hold us back. And the first three are seen as particularly important, yeah? So they're fixed self-view, doubts and rites and rituals as ends in themselves. So just to explain that's a little bit. So first of all, fixed self-view is this kind of fetter that we have of, yeah, we just have a fixed view of ourselves, yeah? So it's partly ideas about ourselves, partly it's emotional, it's quite subtle, it's quite deep. We just have this tendency to think of I'm this kind of person, I do this kind of things, I get on with those kind of people, and we limit ourselves in this way. This is what Buddhism is saying, that we have fixed views that always kind of limit us and stop us developing our full potential, yeah? So this is fixed self-view and, you know, we can have that about ourselves and we can have it about other people and we can have it about Buddhist movements, yeah? Banti, in one of his lectures, renders this as habit, it's the fetter of habit, so I'm going to be talking about it in those terms, as habit. Secondly, doubts, yeah? So this is not kind of honest questioning of things, but a kind of an emotional doubt, yeah? It's basically down to lack of integration. A part of us loves the idea and wants to move towards the ideal, but other parts of us don't. We don't think we can do it or we're kind of interested in other things. So there's a kind of, a kind of tussling going on within us, a kind of lack of integration, kind of, you know, part of the spiritual life is kind of getting, learning to kind of get all of ourselves behind it, but sometimes that can manifest as doubt, instead of kind of grappling with that task of kind of getting the different aspects of ourselves behind the spiritual life, we just think, oh, I can't do it, oh, it doesn't, it's not going to work for me. We kind of keep everything, we just kind of hold back, we hesitate, we keep everything a bit uncertain and a bit vague. So Banti has kind of rendered that as the fetter of doubt. And then the third one is write some rituals as ends in themselves. That's how it's traditionally expressed. And what it means is that we kind of go through the motions. We do the things that Buddhists are supposed to do because we're a Buddhist, but we've lost our connection with what it's about, with what it's really for, with what it's kind of spiritual purpose is. So we're kind of doing it and we might even think, oh, I'm doing it, so I'm okay. But actually it's not really kind of connected to the underlying purpose only. And Banti's rendered this as superficiality. So we're just kind of doing things on the surface. It's not kind of connected to the actual kind of meaning anymore here. So that's the one I want to talk about first, the kind of fetter of superficiality. So I think one of the challenges for us these days is that the image of Buddhism and the meditation in the wider culture is not of our making. There's a kind of image out there which it's not really to do with us. It's not really to do with Buddhists. If you went on to the High Street and Birmingham and said to people, what do you think about Buddhism? Well, actually, I think you get a very positive answer. I think it's a largely positive image people have of Buddhism, but maybe also in some ways a limited one. So it's an image which is made partly through the media, partly through advertising and not necessarily by Buddhists. So for example, recently there was an advert where a nice smiling monk was advertising green tea. So Buddhism probably is things like it's being calm, it's accepting things, it's having quality time for your own well-being, it's dealing with stress, it's learning to switch off and so on. And again, it's not that those are kind of bad things, but it's not necessarily kind of fully what the Dharma is. But that's the image which is out there. So then those are the kind of people that might be attracted along, then we kind of naturally want to try and cater for those people and kind of meet those people and communicate with those people. And then maybe a kind of self-fulfilling thing that kind of sets in here, we try and make the Dharma accessible to people, and that means we just carry on attracting those kinds of people and maybe don't attract different kinds of people who might respond to a different kind of idea of what Buddhism is. So that's what I'm wondering about is, have we got too much into presenting the Dharma in a particular form which might be attracting a certain set of people but is missing out on a whole load of other different people? And particularly, are we missing out on people who might respond to having the Dharma presented in a more kind of challenging and radical form? I think partly also what goes on is we just get so used to what we're doing. Again, this is kind of superficiality. I know this myself, you know, I've worked in the moment for years, I've written so many blurbs, I've written so many website texts, and you get, you know, it's time to do another one, so you, you know, you bash away, you type, you know, you don't stop and think, okay, what am I really trying to communicate here? Yeah? And you're just going to default mode, and I think when you're going to default mode you're just more and more likely to start going along with all the ideas that are around you. Do you feel so mean? So I think this is a real danger that we just get through familiarity, we just get rather glib and superficial about things, and we just stop, we don't take that time to stop and think, okay, what are we really trying to communicate and how are we going to do that here? And we fall prey to the feta of superficiality. So you can't ignore the image of Buddhism in the wider culture, you do have to kind of speak to it to some extent, you can't speak a completely different language maybe, but you really have to be careful that you don't start subtly over accommodating to that image. Yeah. And I just want to qualify what I'm saying, it's very easy to kind of make sweeping statements, because I don't think we really are superficial in our own practice, that's not what I'm saying. I think when you go along and you meet older members who are running classes, they really care about the Dharma, they are passionate about the Dharma, and actually they're running those classes because they do want to make a positive contribution to changing the world. So that's not what I'm saying, I'm just saying we could communicate that much better. Yeah. So I've got a few points about how we could maybe do that more strongly and boldly. Yeah. So one thing is just learning that part of the skill of Dharma teaching is being both accessible and radical at the same time. Yeah. I wanted here to rejoice in my trabandons merits in Worcester where I live and teach. We've been doing a course based on his book on mindfulness. I think it's a fantastic book. He's very, very skilled at this at being really accessible, but really radical. So he's written this book about life with full attention based on mindfulness. So it's classic Buddhist teachings, absolutely classic Buddhist. And he really does, you know, in each chapter where he's explaining things, he really kind of goes into the kind of depths of it and shows you what the Buddha was really saying about mindfulness and the nature of mind and all the rest of it. It's quite radical in that sense. But it's so accessible and so kind of contemporary in terms of the examples he gives. Yeah. It's just got that skill to kind of give really accessible everyday examples at the same times, you know, kind of pointing you to the kind of radicalism of the Dharma. Yeah. I suspect Panichodron is another teacher who does this. I've not read lots of her stuff, but the bits I've read I think are very good. So it's very quite uncompromising about the Dharma. And yet she's popular. You know, you know, the books sell their bestsellers. So it can be done. I think another thing is when we give example, when we teach you to give lots of examples and anecdotes. Yeah. And again, I think there's a skill here to give it, to give a range. To give people something very accessible and everyday and then something quite radical. To kind of give a range, not just one or the other, but to kind of stretch people in that kind of way. So for example, say you're giving a talk or a class about contentment and the third precept. You can start off by talking about contentment in a very everyday way. Just kind of not doing loads of things at once and just being kind of, you know, grounded in your experience. Then you can maybe talk about kind of watching your mind and what kind of sexual fantasies might arise in your mind at certain times. And then you might talk about how some people practice Brahmacharya. And perhaps it's contentment in a very deep way like that. Do you see what I mean? So you're kind of, you're starting with something that everyone's going to relate to. Then you're kind of stretching people with it. And then you're providing an example of how some people practice that in a very kind of radical way indeed. And I think, yeah, as much as possible in our teaching, we should always be giving the range. Something from both ends of the spectrum as it were. Another point here is also just to keep remembering how radical we are in a way. I was involved in a weekend for young people asking them what they thought about the movement and how we could make it more attractive for them. And one question that was asked, what does it mean to be radical? And their answer was, well, the five precepts are radical. Yeah, going on a treat, that's radical. The body's out of ideal, that's really radical. Yeah, and when it was just interesting, they didn't come up with, that's what they said. They didn't kind of say something completely left field or totally different. It was like, well, this is radical. And again, once you've been immersed in it for so long, you can kind of forget. You can kind of forget a bit over familiar with what you've been teaching and talking about for so long. So I think that's why teaching is so good. I think that's why it's so good, such a good practice and why one benefits oneself so much from teaching the Dharma, that you just come up against that kind of freshness and that kind of people being affected by the Dharma. And it's so good for oneself to kind of see that and experience that and benefit from that. So I think that's a way to stay radical, is to kind of, yeah, to teach the Dharma and be in touch with that kind of freshness and energy. And I did think, actually, going back to the website thing, maybe that's what we should be doing. We should get in most people to write our website texts. You know, find someone who's learned to meditate in the last year or two at your Buddhist centre, who, you know, was really strongly affected by meditation and get them to write it and see what they write. Yeah, might be very interesting. We'll have testimonials rather than a blurb just written by some bold like me. You know, get people who've actually done it to write it. See what they come up with. Okay, fourth point about, yeah, just communicating in a kind of bold and radical kind of way. This is one I've always found helpful over the years is to, when you teach and study, make sure you use Bante. There's nothing like having a photocopy of a Bante text and doing study on that, you know, because it's so clear and uncompromising. It just doesn't let you off, the hook, do you know what I mean? You've just got to really kind of, so yeah, teach Bante and use Bante when you teach and lead study. And yeah, as I've kind of said about the websites, I just think we need to rethink how we present ourselves. I don't just mean sticking in a few sentences about the social implications of Buddhism into our websites. I'd like us to kind of really look at the whole thing, rethink the whole thing, actually. Yeah, somehow it kind of needs to be the other way around, I think. Rather than the Dharma is transforming self and world as something that you might kind of, an idea you might come across if you kind of keep going, keep coming along as it were, I'm wondering whether that actually needs to be right at the front. Yeah, and then all those other things can be in the context of that. So don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm saying we don't do a drop in meditation class where people can come along and learn to relax. I think that's a valuable thing to do, but I'm just saying present it in that kind of bigger context of we are here because we want to have a positive effect on the world, and we're doing that in lots of different ways. So it's kind of, it's a kind of question, kind of changing it all around in that kind of way. And then yeah, as well as doing that, I think we should also just provide more ways in which are kind of bold and radical and challenging in that way. So have courses about Buddhism and transforming the world. Like Dhamma Priya did, give public Dharma talks, maybe give public Dharma talks linking the Dharma to contemporary issues. So just staying alert to those opportunities to do that, and when they crop up having the kind of courage to kind of go for them. An example of this I remember is I remember after 9/11, I was working here at that time, I quite clearly noticed that after 9/11, a few weeks afterwards, the attendance at the Buddhist center went up quite markedly. More people started coming to the Buddhist center. And afterwards I really wished that we'd actually just scrapped our programme for those few weeks and done something completely different and really tried to address what was going on. We didn't quite have the kind of, you know, the kind of presence of mind and courage to do it. Yeah, I thought we missed an opportunity. I did actually, there was one thing I did change. I was giving a Padma Sanva day talk and I changed that completely and gave a different talk. But I just thought we should have just, there was suddenly there was something going on in the culture, people were coming along and we should have been on the case and we should have responded. And yeah, then there's also trying, just going out and addressing new audience in the way Sibouti was talking about. So yeah, I think we need to learn to be bold again. We're a bit too shy of it. And yeah, partly I think this is a reaction to the past. A few of the previous speakers have talked about how in the past the FWA could be a bit, you know, the discourse could be a bit harsh, a bit over ideological, bit arrogant at times. I've just written a book about the history of the FWA. And so part of my research for that was looking through loads of old FWA magazines. It was a hoot, I tell you. It was one. My favourite one was a magazine where the theme was domesticity. So there was a picture of a house on the front cover with a fist holding a Vadra, smashing through the house. That's what it used to be like. So I must say, personally I'm glad it's not like that anymore. But I think we've gone to the other extreme. I think there is a middle way somewhere. Okay, so that's the Federal Superfidgetality, Federal Habit. Yeah, we need to be fresh and creative in our presentation of the Dharma. That's what I'm talking about. So I wanted to talk about this in relation to the idea of coherence. So as many of you all know, as many of you all know, there's been a lot of talk in the order recently about the need to have coherence. So Vantu published his paper, What is the Western Buddhist Order? And yeah, there are important points in that talk. He says, every particular Sangha presupposes a particular Dharma. And we do need to ensure that any new practices that come in and the way we teach and so on is integrated into a whole body of teaching. That we do have a clear coherent Dharma and that we do have a kind of common language for talking about it. Otherwise we just, you know, we can't stay united as a community. So that is important. But I suppose I've got a concern that we'll mistake coherence for habit here, that in our concern to be coherent will just become rather cautious and conservative. And I do, yeah, actually I do worry about that happening here. I think that coherence debate was largely about the order and about things that were going on in the order that needed to be addressed. And of course what happens in the order does impact on the movement. But my sense of the movement is that there's a kind of huge uniformity in what we teach and the way we teach. And my sense of the movement is what that means is more innovation, more creativity, more being bold, more taking risks and trying to communicate the Dharma in different ways. So I think this is just one of those perennial tensions, apparently was talking about this last night, how there are just these tensions or balancing acts in the Sangha. She talks about, you know, decision making, you want to consult and include people, but you also want a kind of sense of hierarchy. Or you want to kind of grow and expand, but you also want a sense of depth. There are just these kind of balancing acts where you have to do seemingly opposite things at the same time. And I think this is another one. We need to stay coherent and have a kind of common language and make sure everything kind of works together. At the same time we need to be bold and experimental and innovative and so on. And yeah, there just is a tendency to settle into certain ways of doing things. Partly you settle into them because they work. That's, you know, it's worth remembering that. Something works well, so you carry on doing it. And then you don't quite notice when it stops working or when it's kind of missing out certain people that aren't coming along anymore. And yeah, the obvious example of that, which has been talked about a bit recently, is young people. It's become very, very clear that we're not attracting many young people. And if you look at the statistics of the order, well, in its early days it was people in the 20s and 30s. These days it's people, mostly in their 40s and 50s and 60s, very, very, very few people in their 20s and a few more in their 30s. And this is a serious issue. Partly it's serious because it means there's a whole bunch of people we're not communicating the damnatee. But it's also serious for us as a community. If it carries on for another 20 years, we'll start going into decline. Because, you know, everyone who's running the institutions will be too old to do it anymore. There won't be enough people around to do it. There'll just be more and more kind of stretch and strain and things will start going into decline. But I think that will start happening in 20 years if we don't do something about this. The other way it will really stretch things is at the moment, well, again, like, apparently was talking about last night, you've got people in the order who've been ordained for 30 years or 25 years or 20 years. So they're taking on responsibilities with so much experience of practice and of the order, the life of the order behind them. And these days we're getting lots of people ordained in their 40s and 50s and 60s, which is fantastic, not against that at all. But what, if that's all you do, it means you never then get those people with that depth of experience of the order able to take on that kind of responsibility. Do you see what I mean? So I think it is a very, very serious issue. I think it's a matter of survival that we attract more young people all the time. So we started, yeah, running some weekends, getting young people along and just talking them to them about their impressions and perceptions. And it was very, very interesting. It's not time to say very much about what they said. But just to mention one thing, they said was, I remember one woman, she was running a class at her university and she said she thought the local order members didn't really approve of what she was doing. And, you know, so, you know, you can imagine the local order members, they've got a concern about presenting the Dharma clearly and coherent, et cetera, et cetera. But the message this person was getting, I don't think anyone had actually said anything to her. It was just kind of implicit. She was just kind of picking up that they were a bit kind of edgy around it. When they really, they should have been absolutely right behind her all the way, you know. So I think we need to be much, much more encouraging with people. Obviously, there has to be some care and all the rest of it, but much, much more encouraging with people. And I've had conversations with groups of all the members since where I've been saying this and people say, oh, but, you know, we need to be careful about what they're teaching. Well, we do. It's true. But, you know, in the early days, Banti, he just handed it on right from day one, who's getting people doing stuff. And it was a bit messy at times and people made mistakes. But that's how things get going, isn't it? That's how we learn. So I think we need more of that spirit, again, just really encouraging people to take initiative and to get out there and to do stuff. And they wanted to do it. That was the thing. That was what inspired them. They wanted to do it. Okay. I'm going on longer than I meant. So, yeah, we need to watch for the feta of had it and always try and have a kind of fresh creative approach. And again, I'm sort of making these statements and every once in a while, I'm just going to stop and I'm going to make a statement which undermines my own argument, just to kind of address the balance a bit. So I wanted to kind of give some examples of how we have innovated over the years, yeah. So when I was thinking about this, three examples came to mind. One was winter of evolution, which started in the '80s, grew enormously in the '90s. And even in the last 10 years, it's had a lot of challenges, largely the recession, but I've been really impressed watching how winter of evolution is adapted to all that. And it's a huge big project now and employs a lot of people and gives them a chance to experience Sangha and a lot of the Buddhist centres in this country were paid for by winter of evolution to be frank. So that was something that came out of the '80s and then grew in the '90s. In the '90s, we had Buddhafield got going and then in the last decade, that's grown enormously. And yeah, so that was a project about taking the Dharma out in a completely new way, trying to meet a new audience. It was innovative and creative and it's been really successful. And I worked with Buddhafield a couple of years ago on the FAO retreat. I was so impressed by the way they knew about teamwork and Sangha building and teamwork. So there was a real kind of depth that they got through that experience. So that was the '90s and then growing through the last decade. And then I think this decade, there's been breathworks. Another major new project using mindfulness techniques to really help people who are suffering in different ways. They've already trained 50 people and they've got another 150 people in training with them. So I suspect in the next decade, we're going to see that really grow and consolidate and deepen. And I think it's a fantastic project. And people say old team based right live because it's gone into decline, et cetera, et cetera. I think that's a bit of an oversimplification. I'd be really interested to kind of look a bit more objectively at what's going on, try and get some kind of facts and figures. Because battlefield, sorry, breathworks see themselves as a team based right livelihood. They eventually want to get teams of people working together to deliver these courses in different cities around the country. So there is actually a major new team based right livelihood getting under work at the moment. So that's one big new project every 10 years. So maybe that's not bad. Yeah, that's something to celebrate, isn't it, and rejoice. But we're now entering a new decade. So that raises the question. What's it going to be in the next 10 years? Yeah, I'll leave that for you to think about. Okay. The Bachelor of Doubts is the next one, the third one. When I was preparing this talk, I was looking through some old notes of old talks I've given. And I came across the notes for a talk that I gave in the late '90s at the opening of the new Birmingham Buddhist Center. I would have given in this very room. Yeah. And I kind of got it out and I hadn't looked at it for years and I read it. And it was quite a strong experience reading it actually. You know, just that kind of time and what my life was like at that time really sort of came back to me. And, you know, the kind of the group of us that was around at that time really working hard to try and get a new center going. It all kind of came back to me with those kind of memories. It was quite a strong, stirring experience. Well, I suppose of impermanence and of insubstantiality because, you know, I was reading this talk by a young man. And, you know, in some ways I kind of really strongly recognized him. And in other ways, I thought, "Is that me, you gave that talk?" You know, it's a kind of different person now reading it. And one of the things that struck me was the kind of tone of the talk. And, yeah, it was quite kind of stirring. There was a sense of kind of gain and loss. Because it was a bit naive in places. It could be a bit earnest. It could be a bit simplistic and sweeping. It was intensely idealistic here. And, yeah, in some ways it was an idealism not yet tempered by experience. But there was also something about it which was just so bold. So confidence, so forthright, so kind of assertive about what we were doing and the value of what we were doing. And, yeah, it just really kind of stirred me up reading that because I thought, "Is it really me who gave that talk?" Was I really like that? And I realized that to some extent, I don't want to kind of exaggerate it, but to some extent I thought I'd lost something. I felt I'd stop being like that to some extent. Yes, I was older, I'm a bit more experienced, hopefully a little bit more wise. But was there also something I'd lost sight of? So, yeah, for a lot of us, getting involved in the FWA meant that our youthful idealism smacked up against the hugeness of the challenge. The difficulties, the fallouts with people, the complex dynamics, the burnouts and so on. The spiritual life can be difficult, practice of anger can be hard. And precisely because we've kind of come at it with such idealism, such high hopes and expectations, it can lead to disappointment. In a way, we'll lead to disappointment. It can lead to a kind of a sense of failure, yeah? We tried so hard, we really put ourselves in, and yet we feel a sense, we haven't quite succeeded, we feel a sense of disappointment. And I think, again, that's a lot of what's been going on in the order and the movement and the last ten years, is a lot of that kind of questioning and taking stock. And a lot of it's been good and necessary, but, yeah, again, there are dangers in that. And I suppose the danger is that we just fall into doubts, we kind of lose confidence and fall into doubt. And often when that happens, I think what we do is, we withdraw from the Sangha and we withdraw into a more kind of individual, private Dharma practice, yeah? We can kind of withdraw into doubt of the Sangha and each other, yeah? Or we subtly doubt ourselves, we subtly doubt what we have to offer, we subtly just kind of lower expectations of what's possible. Or we doubt that being radical in today's world is really possible and we just think, well, the world won't change. So, yeah, in a way, we have to recognise the feta of doubts and see that this is about integration. In our spiritual lives, we all have to kind of, yeah, I think part of the spiritual path is integrating our idealism with our lived experience. Yeah, we all have to kind of do that work of integrating our idealism with our lived experience, otherwise we'll fall into doubt, yeah? It's kind of work that we have to do, it's necessary work. So, integration is not just something that comes at the start of the spiritual life, I think it's something that comes later on as well. And youthful idealism is a necessary phase, it's really positive. I'm saying this because there was a, in Shadr a few years ago, there was a little trend for poo-pooing the young hero. And I just say, please do not do that, yeah? That phase is a phase of energy, it's a phase of momentum, it's a phase of testing oneself and learning about oneself. It's so kind of valuable and it will mature with experience. So, yeah, we should just be encouraging youthful radicalism to kind of temper itself into mature radicalism, not into the fetter of doubt. So, I'm running slightly over time, is it all right if I go on for another 10, 15 minutes? Is that all right with me? Okay. So, yeah, I've been talking about keeping our teaching radical by watching out for the three fetters. And, yeah, so looking out for the fetter of superficiality, just being aware of the image of Buddhism in the wider culture, not over accommodating to that and not falling into superficial ways of presenting the Dharma. Watching out for the fetter of habit, being aware that organisations have a tendency to run along familiar lines, and we can fall into a kind of collective habit and not notice what we're doing and not see the opportunities we're missing. And we can fall into the fetter of doubt, the spiritual life is challenging, there will be failures, we won't always live up to ideals, and we mustn't fall into doubt into kind of lowering our vision of what's possible or our sense of confidence or our sense of audacity. And, yeah, I'd really like us to look at how we're presenting ourselves quite radically and have a kind of some kind of discussion about the words and images and ideas that we're using in our kind of public interface. But the last thing I wanted to talk about was just to give a kind of model for radical Sangha. Or a kind of a bit of a vision for how a radical Sangha could work. So I'll try and do this as quickly as possible. And some of you will spot where I've adapted this from. So it's just a model of how people can work and practice in different ways in the Sangha, but all contributing to a kind of overall radical Sangha or radical Buddhist movement here. And it perhaps overlaps a bit with Sabuti's three areas of activity that he mentioned in his talk. So in my model we've got the retreatants, so we've got people who live and practice as retreatants, then we've got people who live and practice as Sangha builders, and then we've got people who live or practice as social activists or socially engaged Buddhists. So I'll just explain each one in turn and the kind of a particular role that they all play. So the retreatants are the people who, the way they live is they step back from society. Deliberately and creatively and skillfully they step back from society and they live a kind of pure undiluted, as it were done in life. They live on retreat, they have lots of time for practice, meditation practice, that kind of pure undiluted type of things. So maybe they would be on long retreats, kind of hermit-like figures, maybe they would be living at retreat centre, leading retreats, maybe they would be elders of our community. So like Banshee, he just lives a very quiet life, but he's still there in a way isn't he? Kind of leading by example and occasionally speaking out. So yeah, the role these people play is they can guide and inspire. Maybe they have a special role to play in guarding the founding principles. They remind us also of the depths of the dharma, of the depths of its possibility. Maybe just by their example, by being on a long retreat, really kind of practising intentionally in that way, maybe through teaching on retreats or maybe like Banshee, just meeting up by being a friend to lots of people. So that's the retreatants part of the Sangha. Then there's the Sangha builders. So these people are kind of an interface between us as it were and the kind of surrounding culture here. So these are people who either help or live in or work in Sangha institutions. So they're helping people in the surrounding world contact the dharma and learn about it and live it more and more fully. So they're trying to kind of reach out to that 10% of people that Sabouti talked about who will respond to the spiritual life and want to live it. And they're building the kind of institutions and forms and structures and projects that will help people do that. And those might either might be traditional FWA structures like communities for example, or it might be new forms that emerge over time. So they're the Sangha builders and they're building Sangha and using Sangha as a spiritual practice in itself, a practice of friendship and selflessness and so on. And then the third strand in the radical Sangha is the social activists or the socially engaged Buddhists. So these are the people who actually kind of step into the surrounding culture of society. So they're going out into the world trying to relieve the suffering of the world in that kind of world. And yeah, their particular emphasis is on their dharma practice being about working in the world to transform and help the suffering of the world as it were. And I think there's a spectrum of approaches within this kind of third, as it were. And the spectrum is between those that will do this in a way where the dharma is more kind of implicit and those that will do it in a way where the dharma is more explicit. So this term dharma light got used the other day. I must say I really don't like that term because I find it rather derogatory. So it's more about where your dharma, your implicitly inspired and motivated by your dharma practice, but you might not be explicitly teaching dharma. And then there's a kind of spectrum towards people who they're also motivated that way and the way they're doing it is by explicitly communicating the dharma to people. So to give an example of those, there are lots of order members implicitly doing this. They're order members, they're Buddhist, they're practicing, and part of their practicing is being a teacher, being a business person trying to run an ethical business, being a fundraiser for a charity, being a social worker or whatever it is. So they're working in the world and it's guided and inspired by their dharma practice. Then you might have something like breathworks where it's taking something so it's getting a bit more explicitly dharma, although it's not quite the dharma fully. But you're taking a kind of technique and you're seeing well that's got an application to kind of help the suffering of a particular group of people. So that's what we're going to do. And then you might have people who are doing it even more explicitly. So they're kind of going out and trying to communicate the dharma to influential people in society or trying to kind of communicate the dharma to help new groups in society. So I think that was what Sabote was talking about in his talk. He was particularly talking about, particularly trying to emphasise that more kind of explicit socially apt, explicitly dharma socially active type activity. We have done a bit of that. I think Bant is an example of that. He's given talks in the past about Buddhism and blasphemy for example, Buddhism and world peace and nuclear war. So there are kind of precedents. But I think Sabote is saying that's the one which could be much, much more strongly present in our movement in the West. Well, another present is India, of course. He's saying it is there. So you've got these three strands. You've got the retreatants stepping back from society. You've got the sangha builders as a kind of interface in society. And then you've got the social activists stepping into society in that way. And yeah, in the early days of our movement, what we've done in the first 40 years is we've established that middle phase. Most of the emphasis has been on that. And maybe that's what needed to happen in order to kind of get something going and have a kind of base from which to move out. That's what you have to start with. We've done the sangha building thing and there's so much that's been established here. And maybe we've less emphasized the social activists that kind of stepping out dimension. But perhaps that could be part of the next phase. Perhaps that's what's coming next. And that's in a way that's what Sabote was saying that we need more emphasis on that. So it's a model. Don't take it too literally. It's not like everything will kind of nice and neatly fit into it. But hopefully it's useful kind of seeing how we can function in different ways. And how I might be functioning within one strand, but what I'm doing is a value to the whole thing as it were. It has its place in the whole kind of radical sangha. And yeah, it's a model, so don't take it too literally. So yeah, they overlap, don't they? For example, breath works. You could say that's the social activist wing, but actually a lot of people in breath works see themselves as starting a team base right now. They're also in the sangha building. Or you might have someone who works in a Buddhist center. So they're mainly in the sangha building wing. But part of what they might do is go out and do school visits. And they might be really thinking about how can I present the Dharma to kids in a kind of exciting way. So they're also partly in the social activist wing. So it's a model, but don't get too kind of caught up in it. The other may be potentially helpful thing about this model is it shows how each makes a distinctive contribution and kind of balances out the others. So each kind of wing, or you can only have two wings, can't you? Each strand kind of balances out the others. So maybe each one on its own in isolation from the others has a kind of inherent danger or inherent tendency. So the retreatance, perhaps without the other strand, the danger is that it becomes a bit kind of individual. It becomes a bit kind of diver-like. You just withdraw into your own practice. You're drawn a little bit away from the sangha. There's a kind of danger of a lack of altruistic dimension. Possibly. It's a potential danger. Maybe the potential danger of the sangha builders is where you kind of establish something. And then it just kind of trundles along and we get a bit conservative and we get a bit stuck in a certain way of doing things, a certain model, as it were. Maybe the potential danger of the social activist wing is that, well, it's hard out there, isn't it? The worldly winds blow stronger in certain ways. There's a danger of burnout. There's a danger of kind of getting caught up in all the kind of ideologies and forces that are out there in the world here. So the thing about this model is that they can help each other. They can kind of balance each other out. So the retreatants can partly be there for their own practice, but they're also there to allow others to kind of come into contact with them, to recharge, to kind of reconnect with the depths. It kind of gives them an altruistic kind of aspect to their practice. The sangha builders are there, you know, they're doing their own practice, but they're also providing a kind of base. They're providing supportive conditions in which people can kind of live and kind of from their go-out into the world, is it worth it? So they're also part of the whole thing. They're also, there's a kind of, you know, very, very much altruistic dimension to what they're doing. They're kind of giving the chance, yeah, for people to kind of have a kind of really solid supportive base in which to kind of go out. And they're also providing the opportunity that those people that might be contacted out there kind of kind of come in and go deeper if they want to. And then the social activists, they're kind of providing that contact with the wider society, and they're contacting different kinds of people. And so yeah, they're kind of, they'll kind of keep the rest on their toes, is it worth? Do you see what I mean? There's a kind of tension and a kind of balancing out that kind of goes on between those three strands of the sangha. So that's, yep, pretty much what I wanted to say. I've talked about the fetters of doubt, superficiality and habit that can hold us back from taking a more radical approach. And I've talked about this vision of a radical sangha and how we can all work in our own ways to be part of a kind of sangha, which is very much offering something radical and transformative to the world. And I've talked about, yeah, there is a need to find new forms, especially new forms for kind of more socially active Buddhism, communicating the dharma to more groups in society. Just three last points, quite briefly. You can kind of get in talking about the movement needing to be more radical, but just to kind of remind, I mean, you know this, but just a reminder that it's not the movement that becomes more radical, it's us. It's us that we've got to do it. We've got to draw deeper in our practice, we've got to be bolder, we've got to be more imaginative in the forms and the shapes that dharma work can take. We've got to be intelligent and critical, and we've got to have the courage of our convictions. Second last little point, it's another story from Naga Bodhi, actually. I remember him telling this story on a retreat I was on years ago. And at that time, I know it actually wasn't anymore, but he'd recently been the editor of Golden Drum magazine, the Buddhist magazine. And as the editor of the magazine, he used to get frustrated that people would write this rather dull article, a bit kind of dull and worthy. And he knew that a lot of these people were very talented people. You know, they come from jobs in the world where they had a lot of responsibility, they were talented, intelligent people, and he couldn't understand why when he asked them to write an article, it was so kind of boring. And he was talking to Banti about it and probably a bit frustrated, and Banti's answer was very interesting. I find this quite moving, actually. What Banti said apparently, he said, well, they've left behind their mundane talents, but they've not yet found the genius of their individuality. They've not yet found the genius of their individuality. I find that quite moving, because I think in a lot of our discussions in the last few days, there's a sense of we really respond to the idea, but there's a sense of how do we do it. It's a bit painful, it's a bit frustrating. You're in that kind of middle phase where you've moved away from something and you know where you want to go, but you can't quite do it yet. So I think I find that useful just to kind of realise, just keep going, keep trying, and eventually we will find the genius of our individuality. And yeah, it just takes time. Last little point, there's an academic paper called Why Religious Movements Succeed and Fail, which was kind of current in the movement a few years ago. And I often go back to it and reread it, because I think it's very interesting. But just one thing to mention about that now, in this paper, the guy who wrote it, he's an American academic, it's not a Buddhist. He says that thousands of new religious movements are founded every year. There's a lot of new religious movements being founded. Apparently the vast majority don't last very long at all. Apparently less than one in a thousand last more than a hundred years. So that's quite sobering in a way, isn't it? It's quite scary. In a way, statistically, the odds are against us in a certain kind of way. In a way, it's very, very unlikely that a new religious movement will succeed and will last for very long. And then he goes on to talk about what happens, why is it, they fail. And it's usually one of two things or a kind of mixture of them. So one thing is that, yeah, first of all, it's usually when the founder dies, that things go pear-shaped. And one of two things happen, or a kind of combination of them. So either there's different interpretations of the founders' teachings, and then there's a kind of schism, and I think the thing just fragments in that kind of way. Or the movement just simply loses momentum. You know, there isn't that kind of inspirational figure there anymore. And things just slowly kind of grind to a halt and fizz out out. So this is the challenge for us. It really is a question of, what are we? Are we going to last? Are we really going to kind of keep going into the future? And if we're going to do that, we've got to keep up that momentum. We've got to keep up that inspiration. We've got to kind of stay radical in that kind of way. And yeah, I think we can do it. But I'm saying that it's not to be taken for granted. It is a big challenge. Banti's given us so much. We might change some of the language. We might want to change some of the emphasis. We've kind of rounded out what he's given with our own experience, our own personal experience of practice. But really all the principles and all the practices are there in what he gave us in those early days. And that kind of current of spiritual inspiration that he set off. So it's up to us to keep it alive. It's up to us to practice and teach radical Buddhism together. Up to us to do that, to help to build a better world. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [Music] [Applause] You You
